Lord of Misrule - Softcover

Jaimy Gordon

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0857386719 ISBN 13: 9780857386717

Publisher: Quercus, 2012

Synopsis

Longlisted for the Orange Prize 2012. He planned to steal with these horses, who were all better than they looked on paper. The trick was to get in and get out fast. But could he really pull it off? Could he be that sure, could he count on being that lucky? Listen carefully my dear. Lord of Misrule, he whispered loudly. Lord of Misrule, Margaret. Memorize that name.

About this title

Review:

Amazon Best Books of the Month, December 2010: It is nearly impossible not to be drawn into horseracing cliches when describing Jaimy Gordon's novel Lord of Misrule, especially since it came out of the pack as a dark horse (there you go) to win the 2010 National Book Award for fiction the same week it was published. It's a novel of the track, and Gordon embraces racing's lingo and lore and even some of its romance of longshot redemption, though she knows those bets never really come in, at least the way you think they will. Her story is set at a backwater half-mile track in West Virginia in the early '70s, the sort of place where people wash up or get stuck or, if they're particularly cruel, carve out a provincial fiefdom. The horses there are washed up too but still somehow glorious, and they're as vividly and individually defined as the people who build their lives around them. Between horse and handler there's a sort of cross-species alchemy that, along with Gordon's gorgeous language and wise storytelling, provides the central beauty of her mud-caked but mythic tale, which Maggie, one of her most compelling characters, comes the closest to describing: "On the last little spit of being human, staring through rags of fog into the not human, where you weren't supposed to be able to see let alone cross, she could make a kind of home." --Tom Nissley

About the Author:

Jaimy Gordon was born in Baltimore. She teaches at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo and in the Prague Summer Program for Writers, and received an Academy-Institute Award for her fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Lord of Misrule is her fourth novel, and was awarded the National Book Award for Fiction 2010.

About this edition

• Publisher: Quercus
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0857386719
• ISBN 13: 9780857386717
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 375